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Jet lag. Just about everybody flying across the country experiences it.

Whether going east to west, and suddenly finding yourself up until 2 a.m. body time, or going west to east and going to bed when you would otherwise be having dinner, it's not an easy transition.

Now imagine you're a professional baseball player who has to not only deal with jet lag, but also go out and play nine innings of competitive baseball at the highest level. Sounds pretty hard, right?

And yet that's what goes on fairly often over the course of the 30-team, 2,430-game major league season, when teams embark on road trips to the opposite coast.

As the Red Sox embark on a West Coast trip against Seattle and Oakland, where they'll be getting underway at 10 p.m. East Coast time, it begs the question of how big of a disadvantage they may be playing at. Then again, do the Sox gain a bigger benefit when the Pacific time zone teams visit Fenway?

By the time West Coast games finish up, most guys on the East Coast are usually fast asleep in bed, or at least well on their way. By the other token, a day game for the A's or Mariners out on the East coast is the equivalent of starting around brunch time.

Teams in both time zones can struggle when heading out on long road trips, but does either side have it worse than the other?